Emigration

Since the Revolution, there has been a small but steady emigration of
educated Iranians. Estimates of the number vary from 750,000 to 1.5
million. Most such emigrants have preferred to settle in Western Europe
or the United States, although there are also sizable communities of
Iranians in Turkey. Newspapers in Istanbul claimed during 1986 that as
many as 600,000 Iranians were living in Turkey, although the Turkish
Ministry of Interior has reported that there are only about 30,000
Iranians in the country. The United States census for 1980 found 122,000
Iranians living in the United States. By 1987 it was estimated this
number exceeded 200,000, with the largest concentration found in
southern California.

Iranian emigrants tended to be highly educated, many holding degrees
from American and West European universities. A sizable proportion were
members of the prerevolutionary political elite. They had been wealthy
before the Revolution, and many succeeded in transferring much of their
wealth out of Iran during and after the Revolution.

Other Iranians who have emigrated include members of religious
minorities, especially Bahais and Jews; intellectuals who had opposed
the old regime, which they accused of suppressing free thought and who
have the same attitude toward the Islamic Republic; members of ethnic
minorities; political opponents of the government in Tehran; and some
young men who deserted from the military or sought to avoid
conscription. There were virtually no economic emigrants from Iran,
although a few thousand Iranians have continued to work in Kuwait,
Qatar, and other Persian Gulf states, as before the Revolution.